Tiny May update- Things starting to turn around?

Well I finally had an ok month! Was a little overdue to say the least but I'm really hoping there's a lot more to come!

 

Last month

 And year to date........

Safe to say considering were 5 months into the year these are pretty horrendous results. Saying this my expected ev I'm more than happy with right now and it's only increasing. Volume wasn't great this month thanks to a pretty rough bout of food poisoning (I won't go into any detail)...

When bad regs try to needle me at the table for poor results I have one scene that always pops into my head :)

 

Maybe over the next couple of months I can climb a little closer to me expected value and we'll see if they start abusing me for ''running hot'' then :).

Just a real short post here as I'm a little busy/rushed at the moment but did't want to skip a months update! In the coming days I'll be posting about a cool new poker training website which I believe will interest a few of you and also be posting a few photos of the sick new apartment me and my flatmates will be moving into before the end of the month!

In the meantime don't forget to check out and sign up to pokernomads for any of you poker players who like to travel and get around (and lets face it, who doesn't?). 

 

 

Me again!- Turning to the dark side in search of a brighter future

Well it looks like the spin'n'gos may be getting a little bit fishier for the foreseeable future! 

Despite my initial rant about the introduction of pokerstars new format it would seem that these games are still beatable in the longrun for good players and currently games are soft enough that variance isn't enough to put me off!

So disregard my previous doomsday predictions and welcome in the era of the spin and go with me! Ive spent the last 5 weeks playing this new format exclusively and my expected results are more than good enough for me to happily make the switch from hypers. The simple fact of the matter is that these games are soft enough for us to make a very healthy expected return on investment and currently I'm enjoying a new challenge. One thing I really like about these games is that due to the deeper nature of the structure icm plays a less important role in comparison to hypers. ICM in the hypers basically dictates the stakes you will play up to and despite my confidence in my postflop game I feel this is what always hindered me climbing the stakes faster and basically making more money. Now that these games are deeper and we can take advantage of our postflop game to a bigger extent I feel very confident that I can improve my game and my winrate to a level I haven't seen before.

Im not even going to bother complaining about running bad any more as I realise most of you either don't care, don't understand or don't believe me :). These are my results since starting spins (with rakeback added just so it looks a little less underwhelming!).

And year to date.

I actually bricked a 240x spin at the 30s already so that was a shame! Would have made a nice little peak on my graph but hopefully next one I bink I can actually win!

Just a short update here for now. I missed my update last month so I didn't want to get into bad habits of missing posts and this is fairly big news for me to report too. Hypers were a lot of fun but poker evolves and despite my original horror post about these games I'm actually very happy with how things are beginning to shape out.

In other news training in the gym is still going very well, I'm still trying to fit in as many films as possible, my tattoo is very much in the works, I'm now listening to audio books whilst I play as opposed to reading outside of work hours and my flatmates and I are currently looking for a new place to live in the centre of the city! Next month when I'm feeling a little less lazy I'll go into a little more detail about some of those things but for now I need to get back to the tables! Rakeback isn't going to make itself!

February update! Chasing redline, watching movies, reading books (yes books) and general hermit living.

First things first! Poker! 

Not much change dollar wise so far! Unfortunately not a drastic change volume wise either! Pretty on/off month for me starting with a poor week due to illness then a poor week due to celebrating my 23rd birthday. Cant be too upset though as EV was good, I got plenty of study in whilst I wasn't grinding and I had a hell of a week celebrating my birthday with friends and family. Very happy with quality of study over the past 4 weeks and forever plugging those ICM errors (still a massive fish)! Close to break even post rakeback but it still hurts a little knowing I haven't actually made a penny from poker yet this year... Maybe I should have got a proper job after all.... Or maybe stars should just stop toying with me and give me a sodding break  :)

In other news I decided seeing as I spend so much time in the house I may as well make a little extra use of it. Two things I feel I have let slip a little over the past couple of years are reading and watching films. Haven't read more than a handful of books in the past few years and that is something I'm really not very proud of so starting this month I decided to at least consciously attempt to read a lot more. I've started reading 'Death by black hole' by Neill Degrasse Tyson as I'm a bit of a sucker for anything space related and am so far really enjoying doing so. Won't go into any real detail as I could babble on for hours but if there are any fellow space enthusiasts out there this book is a must have for relative noobs or newcomers to the concepts of quantum and astro physics such as travelling at the speed of light or relativity. 

Now 'watching films' to most 'normal' people wouldn't really seem a task worthy of special effort but I've always been a huge movie nerd and up until relatively recently have striven to constantly expand my inner movie catalogue. Basically I f***ing love watching films. I'll honestly watch absolutely anything but it really goes without saying that I appreciate much more movies that don't need to entirely rely on explosions, tits and ridiculous plot to keep their audience engaged (although on occasion these kinds of films really do hit the spot!). Since I've been slacking on the film watching front I've amassed quite a substantial 'to-see' list and I plan on watching at least 20 new/impressive films a month from now on.

So far this month I've had the pleasure of watching;

(Ratings as what I've given them on IMDB)

-JOE (6.5/10)

-ANTICHRIST (9/10)

-MUD (7/10)

-KORENGAL (6.510)

-ETERNAL SUNSHINE ON THE SPOTLESS MIND(5/10- Unfortunately I didn't particularly enjoy this one)

-APOCALYPSE NOW (9.5/10)

-MOON (8.5/10)

-SUPER 8 (8/10)

Id love to go into more individual depth about each of these as a number of them really do deserve it but I fear I may lose a number of my readers forever from lack of interest or general boredom :). I'm seriously considering starting a seperate film related blog in the near future. I'll keep you posted for anybody who is interested. 

Lastly but not least!  A good friend of mine has just set up a new website specialising in poker related travel. Basically the site covers absolutely everything from grind houses/tournament accommodation to casino reviews to mindset vacations with professional life coaches and everything in-between! 

Apart from all of the travel chat he's also working on a community where you'll get answers on all your poker/travel questions, meet other poker players worldwide, find poker houses and more.

Please take a look and any feedback I'll get straight back to my mate!

http://pokernomads.com

Register at

 http://pokernomads.com/register

Thanks again for stopping by and having a read! Good luck at the tables! 

Just a short January update!

Well its my first blog update of 2015 and I'm already late with it...... Some things never change!

Hopefully though my 2015 graph will!

Could have hoped for a better start results wise but my EV is an absolute peach so I'm expecting a turn around soon. Absolutely nada of any importance to report from January as I spent 100% of my time in the gym, playing poker, playing counterstrike and watching films! I might do a cheeky film post in the coming months as this is a real obsession of mine and I might actually be able to construct a slightly less boring update!

One interesting thing that came about this month is the decision to get my first tattoo. Im drawing very close to my 23rd birthday now and I've been a huge fan of tattoos for many years but am yet to go under the needle. I've spent the last couple of weeks trawling through what feels like hundreds of British and Dutch artists but I'm hoping I've found the dude for the job! 

This is the work of Dean Taylor from Nemesis Tattoo and I'm hoping he'll be interested in doing an interstellar inspired forearm piece for me. Ill keep you up to date with any news!

Next month I'll be visiting Amsterdam for a couple of days with some friends to celebrate my birthday so expect a trip report and some pictures once I'm back! 

Lastly I've decided to go and play the WCOAP (world championship of amateur poker) event in London at the end of March. Despite the buyins only ranging from 100 to 200 pounds the turnout is pretty impressive and the prize pool is worth a shot. Also I haven't played live poker in months so I'm quite excited to get the rub of the felt again, feel the chips running through my fingers and bust some donks face to face! If any of you british grinders reading this fancy meeting up for some drinks just hit me up on skype or drop a message on this post.

I think that's all for the time being! Back to the grind! Good luck all

Happy New Year! Well overdue update!

Quite often when the new year comes around we find ourselves inundated with the echoes of 'New year, new me', 'A fresh start' or other such clichéd rhetoric that by definition has little real meaning behind it. But the fact of the matter is that we all (including myself) like to believe that a new year is a new start and that anything that passed in the previous year (whether it be 6 months ago or 6 minutes ago) can be improved upon in one way or another(And granted, sometimes it is). The point I'm trying to make out of this slightly pessimistic intro is that for a poker player the turning of 2015 has a real quantifiable meaning to it, At the beginning of January pokerstars wipes the metaphorical slate of our accumulated vpps and we start a fresh. Basically this means I came to terms mid to late last year with the fact that Supernova Elite was out of my grasp (See figure 1a) but now with this fresh slate I have a whole 12 months to try and play enough games and accumulate enough points to make this epic milestone.

(Figure 1a)

This past year hasn't been bad at all though! Despite that slightly cynical first paragraph my years been one of the most successful of my life in many ways. Meeting new friends, travelling to new countries, spending time with my family, making a living from a hobby I picked up almost 8 years ago, moving in with close friends from home. I wouldn't swap a single one of these things to have hit SNE this last year. Sure you have to make sacrifices if you want to achieve something out of the ordinary and a little beyond the grasp of others but I hope (and believe) this year I can strike a balance between those just listed  and poker to achieve all this AND hit the target of SNE. I'm at risk of repeating myself too many times but the opportunity presented to me by pokerhaven is not one that comes around every day and although I've always felt money wasn't the be all and end all to my happiness I do want to reward them for having faith in me and generally putting up with me!

''Thanks guyz''

I haven't updated this page for a while and the reason being was that there honestly wasn't much to report! Last few months of 2014 were a mixture of grinding, illness, and not much in-between but I'm hoping I can revive this blog a little over the next few months with some slightly more interesting posts. I plan to do a fair bit of travelling this year with ambition to play a lot of the live circuit in the UK as well as a few European EPT events (Barcelona, Prague to name a couple) and also visit Curacao again. These trips alone should easily fill my monthly post but the road to SNE and if all else fails the road to the higher stakes should be an interesting one in itself. 

Anyway! I've had a few weeks off for Christmas and catching up with my family so I should get back to work now! I expect to be a little rusty this week so fingers crossed I don't smash my bankroll in the first day or two! A few people commented to me both in person and online over the past few weeks about my lack of updates and I really appreciate the fact that people have noticed! For any of you regular readers out there I'd like to say a big thank you and I wish you a happy new year!

Peace!

Update time. The end of hyper turbos as we know them?

Well! Its been an interesting week for the hypers regs of pokerstars. This week pokerstars introduced the 'Spin & Go' format to their software. Basically this new format involves an initial slot machine style spin of a wheel which decides on a number the prizepool will be multiplied by. Each game the 3 entrants play a hyper (3 minute) structure and fight it out in a winner take all sng. The draw of these games is the possibility of  playing for a massive prizepool with a relatively small buyin. Obviously stars aren't just giving away money so the majority of games the 3 players will be playing for just 2x their buyin. Unfortunately the draw of the big score is enough to drive gamblers and fish alike to this new format and subsequently affect the traffic in other games.

This chart isn't entirely accurate as it's probably a little outdated but it gives you an idea of the potential jackpots you can hit for your money. The new 30 dollar games actually have a 36k top prizepool! I think it's fairly obvious to understand why this added element of gamble has seriously affected the fishpool in other formats and why a lot of regs (especially those breakeven ones who make their money from rakeback) are seriously worried for the future of 6 max hypers. A drop in trafic at all formats from HU hypers to fullstack cash has been reported and we can but wait to see how these games affect our future earnings and volume.

The reason for this new gambling style format? Back in August pokerstars was bought by Amaya Gaming and it was made clear from the start that they meant to introduce social gaming, sports betting and an online casino into the mix. At the time of the sale of pokerstars there was a real buzz and real hope in the poker community that sooner than we'd imagined America would come back to pokerstars.com and we would see a huge increase in the playerpool. This is something that we now unfortunately have to rely on if we don't want this new format to seriously affect our win rates. Amaya obviously want to bring America back into the market as this will be hugely profitable for them so it'll definitely happen eventually although for now we have to put up with the pretty major decrease in traffic almost certain drop in our win rate. 

Imagine you owned a small yet profitable fast food shop and a Mcdonalds opens up next door taking 50% of your business. This is basically what's happened to us in the last week and I think its understandable why a lot of people are extremely pissed off at what Amaya seems to be doing to our beloved pokerstars. With the talk of online betting and an online casino things are likely to get a lot worse before they get a lot better.  

Having said all this, things could be a lot worse! Games are still playable, America will be back eventually, there's still very good money in hypers for those willing to work for it and spin and go's are beatable and extremely soft (we just need to put a lot more time and effort into learning the new format). Another weird 'benefit' to the introduction of spin and gos is the fact that now in certain parts of the day the games are unplayable as little to no fish are about so we're stuck battling reg infected games. The positive to this is that during those hours I'm almost forced to study which can never be a bad thing! Luckily from starting with pokerhaven the emphasis has always been on quality over quantity so we are still going to be beating our games pre rakeback and SNE (100k$) is still extremely achievable next year so in perspective things really aren't that bad. If someone had told me before I started playing poker seriously that in 2015 I'd be attempting to hit SNE and be profitable pre rakeback I would laugh at them. So, enough moaning for the time being!

In other news I moved gym a couple of weeks ago and started again with my old nutritionist and coach John Otis Hollywood http://www.johnotishollywood.com/ with the hope to get silly lean in preparation to gain some solid clean mass next year. The new gym me and my training partner are now signed up at has a full size olympic swimming pool, a sauna, a steamroom and squash courts that I'm now using on a daily basis and I've found this to be of huge benefit to my life with less stress, better sleep and longer and more quality poker sessions. I find swimming in particular an unmatchable stress reliever and just generally a very relaxing way to start the day.

Just a cheeky update with my pre rakeback sharkscope graph to keep things in perspective :) This is starting at the 3.50 level and I hope to be playing 60s-100s by January of next year so rant over! To finish I'd just like to say (and I apologise for my language) fuck you Amaya! Unless of course you bring back America in which case thank you Amaya, you guys are awesome! 

''So it begins, the great battle of our time.''

September Big Month

Just a quick one. 60s going pretty well so far and I'm currently sat at 130k vpps for the year so I figure I might as well try grind out a 70k month and give myself a very good shot at 300k-400k vpps for the year. Earning 12.687 vpps and a cheeky 0.50c rakeback per game at the moment so if I can manage to breakeven (which I hope to do better than) over the 5439 games I need to play its a decent sum of money and for me would be by far the biggest month volume wise to date. I believe it's important for me to start grinding solid hours soon so that when I start my SNE run next year it isn't too much of a shock to the system. Plus, gotta start saving some dollar for Christmas presents and my PCA trip in January!

Also this next month I wanted to try out cutting any stimulants from my diet to see if I could gain any extra edge at or away from the tables. Plus I'm well aware I don't live a particularly healthy lifestyle and I'm intrigued to see the difference this might make.  I figure cutting out caffeine, alcohol and a sugar from my body completely for a month might make a drastic improvement to my energy levels, sleeping patterns, focus and general quality of life. I'm not a big alcohol drinker but I will miss caffeine that's for sure and I've heard its a pretty difficult thing to quit completely but I'm up for the challenge. I'm sure it can't be too difficult!

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Last but not least, I've been messing around with cyclical ketogenic dieting recently as an alternative way of losing fat ( http://lmgtfy.com/?q=cyclical+ketogenic+diet ). Basically with my current routine I don't feel like I have the time to train 7 times a week, grind hard, keep a social life AND do cardio so this way of dieting seems to suit me perfectly. It's cheaper than my previous diet, I get to eat foods I genuinely enjoy and I don't suffer from that dreaded post workout meal crash. I found the last couple of months that any substantial amount of carbohydrates basically puts me out of action or makes me feel awful for an hour or two afterwards which obviously is far from ideal. Im really hoping that within 4-6 weeks of this diet I'll be ready to start putting some muscle back on after what feels like an age of trying to drop fat.

During this month I'll revert back to weekly updates to keep me motivated and just to keep anyone who is interested up to speed. One of the main reasons for this post though was to provide a pre-excuse to anybody who wants to do anything this month. I won't be drinking, I won't be eating like a normal human being and I'll be working most of my free time so unfortunately I'll be a little out of the loop till October. Anyway, after taking a few days off visiting my friend in Holland I'm really looking forward to putting in a major grind and getting stuff done this month so I'll keep you updated! Laters!